Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/118

 posited the results of his passionately hot observation and in them he noted down their physiology with a style of which only the greatest modern French artists are masters.” What Maupassant, Prevost, Mirabeau and others expressed by word, Marold caught by drawing. If you will, for instance, take the splendid pictures that for three years appeared in the “Fliegende Blaetter” and later came out collectively in a special album,—an unfailing charm breathes upon you. They were all of them Marold’s own conception and the Munich editor merely added the appropriate humorous text. Everything in them is real life, nature and truth—nothing stiff, nothing unreal, no imitation. Two great albums of Marold’s works publishe din Prague fill the soul of the Czech student over and over again with pity that such a splendid talent should have been carried away so soon.

Marold died in Prague December 1, 1898. Of his other works one must mention his gigantic panorama “The Battle of Lipany, May 30, 1434”, painted for the engineering exhibition of 1898. Upon this canvas, measuring 1,362 square meters, Marold created with the help of Hilšer, Jansa, Rešek, Štapfr and Vacátko, a monumental memorial of that sorrowful day which saw the fulfillment of Emperor Sigismund’s words, that “Bohemians can be defeated by Bohemians only.”

Alfonso Maria V. Mucha was born in Ivančice in Moravia in 1860. When we spoke of Aleš we mentioned that in July, 1886 the Munich Society of Czech Artists “Škréta”, under the chairmanship of Mucha sent to Aleš a diploma of honorary membership drawn by Marold at the very time when every one was dragging Aleš down. Later Mucha travelled through Italy and Germany and returned to Moravia where at the castle of Count Khuen he painted thirty pictures for the castle gallery, a history of costumes, and sport of all period of all nations. Thence he went to Paris. A piece of good fortune, so important a factor in the lives of artists in a great city, came to his assistance. When the Renaissance Theatre in 1895 was staging the “Gismonde” with Sarah Bernhardt, Mucha was asked to draw a big poster for this play. The poster made Mucha famous over night. Since that moment Mucha took Paris by storm. The only analogy to this instantaneous success that I can think of is found in the musical field, namely the conquest of England by Dvořák. The refined French taste was pleased by the softened tones of splendidly harmonized colors, by the new shades breathed in such a delicate manner upon Mucha’s lithographs (affiches), by his original novelty of decorative curves, by his astonishing employment of plant material for every new ornamentation, by his soft and wonderfully natural poses of the belles that in spite of sweet fatigue were yet full of life, by his occasional use of the exotic Byzantine mosaic background. All this called forth instantly such an interest that no Czech artist has been given as much attention in publications devoted to art as Mucha. Let me just mention an example, four issues of the well-known literary and artistic publication of Paris “La Plume” which devoted in the summer of 1897, four issues entirely to Mucha and later published them in a special volume. From 1896 on these few Paris years of Mucha’s were filled out with an almost astonishing amount of work. Mucha sent out thousands of drawings from his workshop in the street Val de Grace, a place that was a veritable conservatory revealing by the wealth of its blooms, whence Mucha derived inspiration for his ornaments. Among Mucha’s productions of this period are posters for Sarah Bernhardt (for “Gismonde”, The Lady with Camellias”, “The Lovers”, “The Woman of Samaria”, “Lorenzaccio”, “Hamlet” and “Medea”), for art exhibits (Salon des Cent, being the exhibit of one hundred artists where Mucha received one of his first great triumphs), for business firms (most notable of them are posters) for Job’s cigarettes, for the Champennois lithographic firm, for the Paris-Lyons-Mediterranean railroad, etc.—veritable piles of small works, especially invitations to dinners, menus, covers for weeklies and monthlies, business calendars, book covers, great decorative panels and book illustrations. Those of special interest here are his historical illustrations of Seignobos’ “Scenes et Episodes de l’Historie de l’Allemagne”, in which Mucha, after a careful study of historical costumes, etc., created a great many vivid and historically true scenes, among them the martydom of John Hus and the defenestration of the king’s lieutenants from the windows of the castle of Prague.

The whole wealth of the sunny decorative art of Mucha’s is laid open in 132 colored lithographs, illustrating or rather making up the book “Ilsée, princesse de Tripoli”, in which De Flers’ narrations of the